High School: The Path to Losing Oneself.
It is fifth period in chemistry class, and students are sitting quietly waiting for the lunch bell to ring. In front of them, the teacher is sitting quietly and grading papers. Behind the teacher, the white board is covered with daily assignments, which consist of reading section four and answering the questions in the end of the chapter. Some of the students are deep in the textbook, memorizing the differences between neutrons and electrons, with the aid of pictures and the periodic table of elements, while others are catching their pre-lunch naps. .
Coming into high school, students are used to learning a specific way and know that they will continue to be taught in a similarly until the completion of high school. This common method of education is what Paulo Freire refers to as "the banking concept."" This is when " the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat-(260). A teacher's role becomes that of a narrator who must fill students full of knowledge as if they were containers. .
In "The Loss of the Creature,"" Walker Percy makes an argument about how having a prepackaged idea about something, can create a symbolic complex in an individual's mind, causing them to lose the true essence behind it. Percy would most likely argue that the true essence behind education has been lost long ago. Since a student has been taught a certain way for most of their life, high school seems to offer more of the same. Because the student already feels a loss of sovereignty, he won't feel passion for the subject nor will he be able to spark the change Freire speaks of. This occurs mainly because the student compares an event, trip, or education, in this case, to that of what they have seen or heard about it. Percy compares this to a young couple that set out on vacation.
Percy describes a couple visiting Mexico, and then reveals that they become lost and end up in an Indian village.